I use mouse now for a long time and I cannot adapt to wheel easily for several reasons. That’s why I come with the following suggestion:

Mouse control is quite good but the necessity to use full or none throttle/brake and nothing between represents a severe limitation. It would be really nice to have a key dedicated on keyboard that will represent some in-between state for both throttle and brake.

If you press this key (could be Q for me, as I use W and S to shift gears) and left mouse button, throttle would be limited to set percentage (about 50) allowing acceleration from a curve (and preventing, hopefully, spin in FBM). Once you release Q, full throttle would kick in. The same key could be used to limit the power of brakes allowing for some milder braking and saving tyres.

Ideally this percentage limitation would be a settable parameter, maybe different for throttle and brake. Yet better we could have two keys, each limiting throttle/brake to a different settable percentage, allowing for yet smoother racing using mouse.

Thanks for reading! I think it would be valuable improvement to mouse users and one to which they can adapt quite easily. Any responses to this proposal are welcome!

Quote from EQ Worry :

I use mouse now for a long time and I cannot adapt to wheel easily for several reasons.

?

Do you not drive IRL. Do you opt to use mouse in your real car?

I find that strange as well. After 1-2weeks of getting used to driving with a wheel, you should be loving it. Just don't be put off by your slow laptimes, it all pays off in the end. I've never heard of people driving a mouse because it's "easier" to drive.

On the topic though, I don't think it would be that great, you are better off modulating the throttle with the good old "quickly mash the button" technique.

Thanks for the responses! Sure you are both right, that wheel is better in the end. But wheel also takes a lot of space, puts three more cables to get tangled in, must be fastened to table before you play (as it cannot sit there ready all day long) and basically cannot be moved together with my notebook to different places. Mouse, on the other hand, is small, always ready and easily transferable. That's why I stick to it in the meantime.

I just thought limiting the impact of throttle (left mouse button) and brake (right mouse button) using predefined key (or two) would not mean that much LFS programming effort and it will pay off nicely for all those demo players using mouse as the control device. And there are lots of such players on demo servers, some getting remarkable times. (Much less of us on S2 servers though.) The "quickly mash the button" technique is quite usable on acceleration, but braking is a different matter and I dearly miss there the possibility to save tyres using lower force.

Quote from EQ Worry :

Thanks for the responses! Sure you are both right, that wheel is better in the end. But wheel also takes a lot of space, puts three more cables to get tangled in, must be fastened to table before you play (as it cannot sit there ready all day long) and basically cannot be moved together with my notebook to different places. Mouse, on the other hand, is small, always ready and easily transferable. That's why I stick to it in the meantime.

I just thought limiting the impact of throttle (left mouse button) and brake (right mouse button) using predefined key (or two) would not mean that much LFS programming effort and it will pay off nicely for all those demo players using mouse as the control device. And there are lots of such players on demo servers, some getting remarkable times. (Much less of us on S2 servers though.) The "quickly mash the button" technique is quite usable on acceleration, but braking is a different matter and I dearly miss there the possibility to save tyres using lower force.

Try playing with button rate and use keyboard for acc/brake. They you can get the speed they ramp up tweaked.

Well, from my perspective, I've played LFS since 2003, but never seriously, partly because it was on the mouse. I got my wheel this January, and let me tell you - it's a totally different expirience. The game just feels so much more enjoyable, especially as you get to the more powerful RWD cars. Im currently in love with LX6, it's a beast!

I do agree that wheel takes space (i move mine out the way when i'm not using it, it takes literally 2 minutes to hook it back up), there are cables all around, hell, you even end up making a lot of noise using it, in the heat of the battle: my flatmate from the room below me complains if I race after 23.00

But it's not about the advantage of the wheel to your laptimes, but the overall different feeling of the game. So if you have the money to buy a descent wheel (or if you own one already) and a table to stick it to, do it It's like buying a new game!

Thanks to Woz for explaining to me one more setting I did not understand! Thanks to Xtm for showing me that wheel is really something different! (The wheel in fact sits right in the next room for some months now, but I use it only for playing Revolt. I really must try it in LFS.)

Still I think that limiting throttle/brake when using mouse is not that a bad idea. Looks easy to implement, from my point of view, with great advantages to many beginning and mid-advanced players.

And a sub-question: What do you think about gamepad? That could be a device combining continuous accelaration and limited braking capability with small size and portability. But of course, I don't drive my real car using mouse nor gamepad. Yet.

My wheel broke, so I started using mouse. Wheel is better for sure, but in my case I have only mouse, at least until summer I think the best thing to do would be to add two buttons, one - increasing limit, other - decreasing. Lets say I'm braking into slow corner after and before straight, I start braking with 100% brake power and start decreasing it with button (to prevent wheels from lock up), lets say 10% at one press, and then i want to accelerate that means i need 100% again so I increase that limit. It would be hard for first times, but later that would make you faster Maybe there is any program to make something like that?

Here
Button control rate at 3.40 should do the trick.

pic of the setting

No really :/

Quote :

It would be really nice to have a key dedicated on keyboard that will represent some in-between state for both throttle and brake.

It's very possible. I recorded a short demonstration video: http://youtu.be/QWkWNqJwsOc. I'm using keyboard throttle and brake in this, but if you watch the pedal graphics, you can see that I can use several levels of both. I use PPJoy and GlovePIE to do this. Potentially, it's possible to have nearly unlimited amounts of stepping between minimum and maximum pedal input, as well as progressive sensitivity, automatic blip/cut, etc.

Pedals don't need to be moved out of the way.

even with basic programming skill it is very easy to do with .net + vJoy ("new" easy to use ppjoy)

iiam also a mouse player , is there like a tut to show how to set it up ?

i downloaded this "ppjoy" and its crashing when installing all the time + glovepie dosent work on win7 :\

An alternative is to setup the "button control rate" to a different value according to the car power.
This value creates a ramp to your button inputs - unfortunately all of them, but it is very easy to setup.

This ranges from 1 to 10, and typically for XFG 10 is not a problem ,while with the LX6 you may want to use 4-6 to prevent spinning and lockups.

Quote from Mille Sabords :

An alternative is to setup the "button control rate" to a different value according to the car power.
This value creates a ramp to your button inputs - unfortunately all of them, but it is very easy to setup.

This ranges from 1 to 10, and typically for XFG 10 is not a problem ,while with the LX6 you may want to use 4-6 to prevent spinning and lockups.

yeah but how actually do you setup this ?

Go into options\controls and there is a slider to set the button control rate. Unfortunately you have to change it manually every time you switch cars, but it does help a lot.

Quote from GAVD999 :

Go into options\controls and there is a slider to set the button control rate. Unfortunately you have to change it manually every time you switch cars, but it does help a lot.

great thx , didnt know that. now when iam driving the fxo or xfr my tyres will last alot longer

I've used 10.00 for all cars for a year or two and I do not have that big problems with most cars, I just adapt my driving style for it. Doesn't work that well in racing but atleast seems to do the trick for hotlapping